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Nintendo sold 87,000 DS consoles in the UK in the two days after the handheld device was launched last Friday, beating the record set by the company's GameCube almost three years ago.

The DS sales performance numbers come courtesy of Chart-Track, which released its latest weekly over-the-counter retail sales data this morning.

The 87,000 total is well in excess of the 69,000 GameCubes Nintendo sold in that console's debut weekend in May 2002, itself well above the Xbox's March 2002 first-week sales of 52,000 and the PlayStation 2's November 2000 46,000 opening sales.

These machines were, of course, rather more expensive at launch than the £99 DS. But the new handheld has fared better than Nintendo's other portable console launches, trouncing the GameBoy Advance's 67,000 June 2001 first-week sales and the GBA SP's 47,000 two years ago, in March 2003.

It will be interesting to see how the sales continue. Will they follow the Japanese pattern of high early-adopter sales followed by much smaller sales in the months after the launch, allowing Sony's smaller but steadier PSP sales to take the lead on a week-by-week basis? ®